A remarkable collection of Egyptian artefacts that has been in storage for the past 40 years is soon to go on display at The Atkinson, the arts centre in Southport. Documentation officer Joanne Chamberlain led the cataloguing and detective work.
Can you provide a brief history of the collection?
More than 1,000 pieces dating back more than 5,000 years were collected by a lady called Anne Goodison who housed them in a museum room in her house in Sefton.
She was ahead of her time and very well-connected; she studied hieroglyphics, knew the Victorian adventurers Marianne Brocklehurst and Amelia Edwards and twice went to Egypt with Greville Chester, the collector and author.
Her husband was a civil engineer in Everton and had a road named after him when he installed new sewers.
The football ground subsequently took his name, too. The collection ended up in Bootle museum after she died but it closed in the 1970s and everything was put into storage.
Can you describe a stand-out piece?
There’s a wonderful amphora which was assumed to be Egyptian but I did classics and archaeology at university and I knew it was Greek. I found some paperwork that described her celebrating a birthday while recuperating from illness in a cottage at Coniston.
The amphora had been a gift from John Ruskin who lived next door. Suddenly, I had a connection and I contacted the Ruskin people… they had mentions in diaries and letters but had no idea who she was. We were able to answer each other’s questions.
What else is on show?
There are some very fashionable sandals and phials that contained perfume so we’re going to have a dressing-table arrangement that will allow visitors to smell the scents of the pharaohs as we know what kinds of plants they would have used. There’s a fantastic 3,000-year-old sarcophagus lid and magnificent jewellery.
And when you’re not researching Egypt…
I run a tiny parish council-funded social history museum in St Helens with a colleague. We’ve been featuring a notorious local chap, Fred Deeming, who was suspected to be Jack the Ripper. He was a conman who had 35 aliases. He apparently killed his wife and kids and buried them under the hearth before disappearing with another girl to Australia.
When she met the same fate, Deeming was hanged in Melbourne jail at the same time as Ned Kelly. When Kelly’s reputation as a freedom-fighter gathered momentum, the authorities wanted to rebury him, but they had two bodies and didn’t know which was Fred or Ned.
Can you provide a brief history of the collection?
More than 1,000 pieces dating back more than 5,000 years were collected by a lady called Anne Goodison who housed them in a museum room in her house in Sefton.
She was ahead of her time and very well-connected; she studied hieroglyphics, knew the Victorian adventurers Marianne Brocklehurst and Amelia Edwards and twice went to Egypt with Greville Chester, the collector and author.
Her husband was a civil engineer in Everton and had a road named after him when he installed new sewers.
The football ground subsequently took his name, too. The collection ended up in Bootle museum after she died but it closed in the 1970s and everything was put into storage.
Can you describe a stand-out piece?
There’s a wonderful amphora which was assumed to be Egyptian but I did classics and archaeology at university and I knew it was Greek. I found some paperwork that described her celebrating a birthday while recuperating from illness in a cottage at Coniston.
The amphora had been a gift from John Ruskin who lived next door. Suddenly, I had a connection and I contacted the Ruskin people… they had mentions in diaries and letters but had no idea who she was. We were able to answer each other’s questions.
What else is on show?
There are some very fashionable sandals and phials that contained perfume so we’re going to have a dressing-table arrangement that will allow visitors to smell the scents of the pharaohs as we know what kinds of plants they would have used. There’s a fantastic 3,000-year-old sarcophagus lid and magnificent jewellery.
And when you’re not researching Egypt…
I run a tiny parish council-funded social history museum in St Helens with a colleague. We’ve been featuring a notorious local chap, Fred Deeming, who was suspected to be Jack the Ripper. He was a conman who had 35 aliases. He apparently killed his wife and kids and buried them under the hearth before disappearing with another girl to Australia.
When she met the same fate, Deeming was hanged in Melbourne jail at the same time as Ned Kelly. When Kelly’s reputation as a freedom-fighter gathered momentum, the authorities wanted to rebury him, but they had two bodies and didn’t know which was Fred or Ned.